


Business As Usual

by Im_The_Doctor (Bofur1)



Series: The Pacemakers [14]
Category: Transformers Generation One
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Apologies, Bad Advice, Bigotry & Prejudice, Ceremonies, Chaos, Cultural Differences, Cultural Misunderstandings, Dishonor, Early in Canon, Eavesdropping, Explanations, Family Drama, Homesickness, Hopeful Ending, Isolation, Loneliness, Medical Conditions, Mid-Canon, Misunderstandings, Multi, Pack Feels, Protectiveness, Rituals, Second Chances, Stereotypes, Threats of Violence, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-19
Updated: 2015-09-19
Packaged: 2018-04-21 10:54:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,671
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4826435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bofur1/pseuds/Im_The_Doctor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Minibots have a culture entirely foreign to the larger Bots. They joined this crew readily enough and have managed to brush off most of the misunderstandings that come their way, but this...this is a line that can't be uncrossed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Business As Usual

**Author's Note:**

> Pace - A company or herd of mules; in my headcanon, a family of Minibots; also a traditional expectation and an honor among Minibots who form one.
> 
> One - the first Minibot to agree to join the proposer's pace
> 
> Culumexian - the form of Cybertronian spoken by residents of Culumex, the Minibot city on Cybertron

It hadn’t been long ago that they were still on Cybertron, running as fast as their legs—however long or short—would go into their ship, their _Ark_ , Brawn recalled with a deep sigh as he tightened his grip on the arm of his despondent One, who he’d found hiding in his berth, just a little homesick lump under his thermal tarp.

“C’mon,” he urged, trying to gentle his voice. “Ratchet’s gonna give you something for your energy levels.”

Huffer didn’t answer verbally, but he nodded, pursing his lips and watching their feet. Brawn suppressed a deep sigh and quickened his steps a little. The sooner they temporarily eased some aspects of Huffer’s depression, the better.

Before he had finished that thought, he heard his name from one of the rooms they were passing. Huffer overheard it as well, his shuffle faltering and his helm coming up.

While he was relieved that Huffer was showing some alertness, Brawn couldn’t help but wonder what was being said about him. He knew that most in the _Ark_ had pegged him and his mates as the stereotypically isolated Minibots, prejudiced against larger frames and bearing a distinctly sour outlook on everything. His pace—minus Bumblebee, who could make friends anywhere—had collectively decided to let the larger Bots believe what they believed. After all, what did they know of Minibot culture and values? Nothing.

Secondly, everyone was still figuring out the berthroom situation, who was going where, so Brawn wasn’t quite sure who was in this particular room. Leaning his audial lightly against the door, he heard his name again, followed by laughter. Was he imagining it sounding so scornful? Perhaps not, as Huffer followed his example and drew in closer with a concerned expression.

“…Did you hear him going on about that maneuver he made in the last battle with the Cons?”

“Yeah, but Bots who start believing their own hype are usually the ones who start Unraveling…”

The word slammed into the pace-leader like a blow to the chest, physically knocking him back a step. His vents locked up and a creature long-buried burst out of its hiding place, clawing at his throat until he choked on his dread and shame _for_ that dread. Huffer clung to the doorframe and shuddered—partially in fear of the open scourge they’d just been witness to and partially in fear of what Brawn might do after he’d processed his shock.

Brawn knew what his pace-mate was thinking. Finally the claws of the creature stilled, leaving only his throbbing spark and churning systems. His vents expanded and his systems received air.

He had to be better than this. He _could_ overcome this.

“Go see Ratchet,” he croaked. Huffer released his death-grip on the doorframe, badly stifling a broken little whimper before rushing away. Brawn took a few more steps back until his backstrut hit the wall. There he stayed, silent as the Sea of Rust, even until Huffer returned. Whatever the medic had given him had worked, for his optics were clear-cut as cybre-glass and noticeably bright— _overly_ bright.

“Brawn?” he murmured shakily, drawing as close as he could without making physical contact. “Wh-What are your orders?”

It took everything Brawn had in him to push aside the flashes of lost faces and speak three words: “Business as usual.”

In any ordinary setting, Huffer would have whined at him, pleaded with him, defied him until Brawn would come _this_ close to shoving an energon cube in his face to make him stop. Here he simply bowed his helm and acquiesced. Brawn knew he wouldn’t tell the others either.

 _Business as usual_ , Brawn repeated to himself, hoping the leaden feeling in his chassis wouldn’t keep him from refueling. (Yet he already knew it would.)

At the end of that same quintun, Brawn and his pace-mates watched proudly as Bumblebee stood before Optimus Prime, receiving his official rank as a scout. Bee had longed for this since they’d first boarded, longed for the friendship and respect of his colleagues. At long last, it seemed he’d achieved it as he stood before the officers and received their congratulations and words of advice.

And then Ironhide said it.

He clasped Bumblebee’s hand, nodding his approval, and assuring him, “You’re sharp as scouts come these days; you’ll do well by us, kid. My advice? Don’t get cocky when you’re good at your job. Pride is the first step in people and teams and relationships Unraveling.”

In the course of a nanoklik, the entire pace’s joy fled like a flock of bolt-bats from the light of Cybertron’s sun.

Bumblebee sobbed wordlessly, leaping away from Ironhide as though his hand had just been dunked in oil and set alight. Windcharger, taking advantage of his speed, rushed to the aid of the youngest pace-mate, wrapping protective arms around his shrinking form, holding him upright and speaking urgently in Culumexian, their people’s variation of Cybertronian. Cliffjumper, who only just computed the slur, followed Windcharger’s example and charged, not for Bee but for Ironhide. Gears and Huffer barely caught hold of him in time, so Cliffjumper compensated by exploding.

“How _dare_ you threaten him?!” he raged, causing alarmed glances among the officers.

Brawn looked on in understated distress as Jazz and Prowl moved in front of the shocked Ironhide and Cliffjumper thrashed, trying to claw at them while they demanded what he meant. Huffer was multitasking, holding Cliff still so he could bury his face in his shoulder in grief. Gears was shouting at no one—or everyone—in particular, “Shut up! Just shut up!”

It seemed like ages but was most likely only kliks before Optimus boomed, “ _Silence!_ ” The officers and most of the Minibots complied, but when Cliffjumper tried to protest, Optimus added, “That’s an _order_.”

Everyone noted the Prime’s astonishment when Cliffjumper countered, “Sorry, but it’s not the one that matters.” Spinning around, he demanded, “Just give me the word, Brawn!”

Blowsweep would have responded that way, Brawn thought distantly. Each of his current pace-mates were so like them—Blowsweep, Ignition, Hitch, Overboard, Cardsharp…his first pace. His Unraveled pace.

It would be _so_ easy to respond in anger, but it would only destroy everything they had achieved and any potential. It would dishonor them further. “Stand down, CJ,” he ordered, his voice calm but his shaking hands betraying him. He hid them behind his back.

Cliffjumper looked infuriated but growled through a working jaw, “As you command,” and forcefully unwound to a stance that would look calm to everyone but those who knew him.

There was a full minute where the entire room was in a state of frozen silence. On the mark of the sixtieth klik, Optimus spoke, realizing now where he ought to direct his questions. “Brawn, are you willing to tell us what that was about?”

“I can’t,” Brawn answered shortly.

Again there was a flicker of surprise that Optimus’ facemask couldn’t hide. “Why not?”

“He’s already been…cursed,” Bumblebee piped up in a small voice.

“If you were one of us, he’d tell you willingly,” Windcharger agreed, frowning slightly as he added, “Not that he would need to. You would understand already.”

“For outsiders, larger frames,” Huffer sighed, “the duty goes to the One—the first pace-mate.”

“And who would that be?”

“Me.” Releasing Cliffjumper’s arm, Huffer tried to steel himself, but Brawn had never seen him look so miserable about his identity and rank. “What Ironhide did…what he said—”

“I don’t even _know_ what I said!” Ironhide protested, silenced by a collective withering glare from the Minibots and Ratchet hissing at him to not interrupt. Ironhide’s cluelessness seemed to anger Huffer enough that he could continue more boldly.

“What he said,” he started again, his tone reminiscent of Optimus when he spoke the name Megatron, “was ‘ _Unraveled’_ , or at least a variation of it.”

Even the most steely of their pace cringed a little. Jazz noticed and perked up with a look of dawning dismay. “Is it an insult?”

“Let’s just say calling it an insult is an understatement,” Gears snapped. “Like saying all Cybertron needs is a big, fuzzy _hug_ to be revived.”

“It’s a curse against us,” Huffer concluded. “The worst dishonor our kind can suffer. If a pace—you at least know about paces, don’t you?—is torn apart…Unraveled…whoever was most responsible for it is named an Unraveler. Every Minibot they know, even their own family, _quarantines_ them. Won’t talk to them again in their life.”

Ironhide now looked horrified, much like a turbopuppy which had leaked on the floor and expected to be beaten and flung outside. The look was mirrored by most of his companions.

“It happened to me,” Brawn took over at last, resisting the creature in his chassis as it stabbed at his vocalizer and wet the rims of his optics. “I lost a pace, never mind how, and word got around that I Unraveled ’em. I got disowned, didn’t expect to ever get a second chance.” Somehow he forced a brief half-smile and reached for Huffer’s shoulder. “Till I met him and the rest of my pace. Most of them didn’t know about my previous…situation, but even the ones that did said they’d trust me.”

“By saying what you said, Ironhide,” Bumblebee said quietly, “you implied that…it was going to happen again. That _I_ was going to be responsible.”

“I—I’m sorry,” the weapons specialist stammered, sounding more uncertain than he had since the pace had met him. “I didn’t realize…”

Bee opened his mouth, no doubt to accept the apology, and then glanced questioningly at Brawn, who nodded. Might as well forgive the mech, let him try to make up for it. After all, what did they know of Minibot culture and values? After today, just a little more.

And if, in the future, any of the officers had a quick, fierce reaction if any Bot spoke of _anything_ unraveling, be it knitting or resident Minibot paces, it was nobody’s business but theirs.


End file.
